 It really takes, on average, a year and a half for people to have success if they have the right budget, the right team, and they know how to do this, right? So if you don't have any of that, it takes even longer. And I think that if people were overnight successes, they were completely self-destruct. What's up, what's up, what's up? I'm Brandon Shawn. I'm Cory. And we are back with another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast. You can catch us every Tuesday, every Thursday on YouTube, Apple Music, Spotify, whatever you stream, your podcast, here at the intersection of creativity and currency, this is No Labels. And as you know, we love to bring out people who represent No Labels necessary lifestyle. And this is none other than Wendy Day. Hey, I am so happy to be here. I love what you guys are doing. Oh man, I appreciate that. Wendy is one of the goats in terms of my eyes and how I look at it, in terms of just how you move in this space, we know the history, well, for those who don't know, the cash money, the masterpiece deals, the things that you've done with people like Eminem and then even all the way to continuing to, what's the word, adapt to the new industry and still helping break artists. I don't know, I remember this, I'm not looking to think about a little Donald which is another artist, but it was another artist. Trouble. Trouble, yes, that's what I was thinking about saying. So people who can span generations and still figure out how to be relevant and then somebody who can do it on the outside of the industry in a way, right? That's really difficult. Because I know that technically, we straddle and play the outside game. And I'm like, man, you were doing that back then and then you managed to continue to evolve. I've always been doing that, yes. Right, that's a very new musician. Yeah, because like all the deals that I did, we put the music out independently first and built the leverage and got them to the point where they could get the multi-million dollar deals. Can you throw in a couple of those numbers out there just for people who don't know? Just stun on them a little bit. Okay, I'm not sure what you're asking. Like the $30 million cash money deal? Yeah, just so people can understand. Trouble's $8 million deal. Just took the gravity of a windy day, the likes of windy day. And I think- We build millionaires. That is a hell of a sales pitch. Yeah, that's the goal. That is a hell of a sales pitch. Can you sign me or whatever? The great thing is, I don't need to sign you. You can do this yourself. You can do this yourself, yes. You can keep the ownership and you can keep the control. So that's a perfect segue to what's the biggest misconception about what you actually do. I think the biggest misconception is that I have a magic wand or some special fairy dust and I can just sprinkle it on people and they don't have to do any work and they'll be famous when they wake up. And that's not the case. It's a lot of work. It takes money, it takes motivation, it takes work ethic, it takes great music and it takes caring, like really wanting to win and wanting to excel. It's not, this is not something somebody can do for you. I can't just hand it to somebody. I wish I could, but I can't. Actually no, I don't wish I could. I love that people have to work for this. Because when you work for it and you succeed and you start to make money, the money has more value because you saw what it took. It wasn't just like winning the lottery and all of a sudden you wake up and you're wealthy one day. Right, yeah. You have to actually put in the work and you learn to appreciate it. It really takes on average a year and a half for people to have success if they have the right budget, the right team and they know how to do this, right? So if you don't have any of that, it takes even longer. And I think that if people were overnight successes, they would completely self-destruct. Where's that one to have your number come from? Are we talking about from ours like complete ground zero into successful career? Yeah, and that's if they have everything and a little bit of luck, like everything going for them, the right budget, the right team, the know how everything aligns, the great music that fans like consume ravenously, like best case scenario. Well, just for clarity too, right? Zero, and then you say a year and a half to the terms like break even, like break even, break even. Yeah, let's say break even, let's not even say blow up because when you break even, you will have a buzz. People will know who you are, but it takes a while to break even, right? The numbers and the income, you're making income from shows, from streaming, from merchandise. Do you guys have merch for your podcast? We're working on it. Come on. It's coming down. I will buy it and wear it on my podcast. I would appreciate it. I would be happy to do that. Like I'd love to support you. So it's really important to monetize early because the people that love you will support you. So you do believe in monetizing stride together? Do you think that's a point where it makes sense for the artist to even start thinking about it? I think you monetize from day one, but, and it's a huge but, big but, you don't focus on the money because there's a lot of stuff you're gonna have to do for free. And if you focus only on the money when it's time to like do free shows and show up to events and you're not getting paid yet, if you focus only on the money, you're gonna kind of screw yourself out of an opportunity to promote and meet people and build your buzz. And that's so important, that's so key. People wanna connect with you as an artist, right? People just wanna feel the connection and the internet is amazing, like we live at an amazing time in life, but it's not enough. You actually have to go out and meet and greet and interact with people. Like a politician, right? People really want to feel your vibe and you can't necessarily feel somebody's vibe through a screen. I mean, you kinda can but not really. So that whole real world aspect is as important, I think, as your persona online and your story. And I think it's really important to show people who you are. And if you're focused only on the money and you're like, okay, I'm not leaving my house for under 50 bucks or for under 500 or for under 5,000 or whatever monetary value you put on yourself, you could be really doing yourself a disservice. So I want people to monetize but I don't want them to focus just on the money. That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. That makes sense. So when you talk about this team that needs to be in place or that would be nice if you had it in place. It would be nice. It's not mandatory. It's not mandatory. Yeah, keep going. What would that look like? Definitely people that are committed to you, like people that want to be down and in your world, but they also have to have some degree of business sense. Like they can't be somebody that scares off other people. They can't be somebody that doesn't know what they're doing. They can't be somebody that's too aggressive. So it's gotta be somebody that can do business, somebody that can talk, somebody that can follow up, somebody that is somewhat non-threatening so that people aren't afraid to approach you as an artist or afraid to do business with you. You've seen those scenarios before? Shug Knight, yeah. Yeah. I mean, but he was arguably successful, right? Terribly successful, yes, very successful, but he also used to scare away a lot of business. There were a lot of people that were afraid to do business with Death Row in the early days because they were afraid of Shug and his connections. And Shug really wasn't scary. Like if you did the right thing and you came respectfully, there was really nothing wrong with Shug. Shug really was only a problem if you brought the drama or you were trying to take advantage of the artist or you were disrespectful or... Did you ever work with them personally? Yes. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah, I was close to Death Row. It was close to Death Row and Bad Boy because at one point they were really running the industry. And then I befriended Tupac. So I was working with Tupac when he passed away. I befriended him when he went to prison. And I was shopping his deal when he was leaving Death Row so that he could start his own label. And that whole camp were my friends. Like I was very close to Beeman and Kevin Black. Shout out to the people that worked at Death Row because they really were the reason that label was so successful. They really worked hard. You mentioned Tupac and he was such a unique character, right? Very special. And I remember even that you didn't necessarily like him at first. I didn't. Yeah. He was loud. I'm not just... I used to avoid him. It's really funny now, right? You're pretty loud yourself though. I am, but I was never... I am loud. This is true. But I was never like messy or obnoxious with it. Yeah, yeah. So when you summarized it, someone who got to see it more and like was more on the business side of like working with him too, what do you think was special about him from the terms of like... His mindset, yeah. The way he thought was amazing because he had been raised by Black Panthers, you know? So he was extremely pro-Black and cared very much about people of color at a time when a lot of other people were in straight pimp mode, like get money, get money, get money, you know? And he wanted to do better and he wanted to make a living, but he wasn't willing to sell out to do that. And I think that's what made him so unique. Like his philosophy from day one was to help people and that's what connected me to him. Like in the business plan that we put together for his label, which was called Euphanesia, there was daycare centers in the office. There was a daycare center in the office. In the plan for the community centers, there was medical and daycare centers. So he really cared about people being able to live comfortably and fulfill their basic needs so that they could get to that next level in Excel. Because when you're focused on the struggle and you're focused on having to feed yourself and clothe yourself, you can't do all that extra shit because your mind is too focused on survival, right? And you're always in fight or flight mode. But once your basic needs are taken care of, you can really like start to do other stuff and focus on, okay, how can I make a difference? How can I make my life matter? What's my legacy? There's like other stuff you can really think about and get to and that's what I loved most about him was he really cared. It was genuine. It's funny you say that, the genuine, that really got me. Because I've seen multiple scenarios where artists pretend to care about things like that. Right. And it's very opportunistic. Yes. And it gives you a real bad- I've worked with a few of those. It gives you a real bad taste in your mouth, right? It does. Because you really don't know. Like you can't tell up front like who's full of shit and who's real. So it's like the proof is in the pudding. Like once the money starts to come in and you see what people focus on when they have money, it kind of tells you where they're at, where their mind is at. Or let's use this to get attention for a record. Yes. And I don't really care about the thing. Yes. We've had some of those and seen those. And that's, I always try to tell people to, doing that actually usually isn't going to get you the result that you want anyway. Like if it's like a bad track or if you're having trouble getting attention, you can't just attach it to, I don't know, a social movement and then think all of a sudden it's going to blow up. No. That's the part that makes it worse. It becomes a gimmick. It becomes a gimmick. Yeah. And after a while, people can tell what's real and what's not. And if you come up on a platform that you stand for and then somebody sees you doing the opposite, it's like, whoa, what are you doing? You know, it can hurt you more than help you. Yeah, bandwagon jumping is never a good marketing plan. Hey, well, a lot of artists, I feel like need to hear that because we, and I understand the need to grow and try to take advantage of trends and things like that. And you don't think too bad of it when it's like a regular trend, but when it starts to become like social leaning, it just gets real weird. It's like, hey, man. Yeah. And I feel like that's kind of like beginning of selling out in my own opinion. Exactly. We're sitting here on the anniversary of George Floyd and how many people jumped on that bandwagon when it happened, right? Yeah. You know, it was just crazy. Like people were like, oh, that's the movement. Let's jump on it. And they didn't stop to think that, okay, when this is no longer in the news, where are you gonna stand? Like, where are you at? What have you done? You know, what difference have you made? Yeah. And then people, we're in that era where people will juxtapose you here and then whatever your next actions are. It will come right back at you. It will. It will. Yeah. So some artists and managers are just waiting for lucky moments when the ones who are killing it have systems to consistently take artists to another level over and over again. And if you wanna see what that looks like, we just did a collab where we not only show the system that we use that's resulted in Billboard, hit some of the biggest viral moments on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. But also we got JR McKee to break down how he took the artists from zero to one of the biggest hit songs of 2022 and getting a Grammy in January of 2023. This is recent stuff, not old tactics. If you wanna check it out, go to www.brandmannetwork.com slash Grammy. Don't forget the www or it won't work because JR gets into the details of looking at the data, decisions that got made, how much content got created and how they adjusted the content over time for different parts of the campaign. This is real behind the curtains type of stuff. So again, go to www.brandmannetwork.com slash Grammy. If you wanna check this out and apply it to yourself. Back to the video. Like along the lines of staying on the outside of the industry, two questions. One, why is that? And two, how do you do that for so long? Why is that? Because I didn't like how the industry functioned. I'm saying this in the past tense, but it's even sort of in the present tense. Like the artists are always the last to get paid. And I came into hip hop because I love the music and the energy of the music and the stories in the music. And then I learned to, from hearing the music, I learned to get to know the people making the music and I understood the struggle, still do. And I had a problem with people that were making money from hip hop, but not giving back to the culture or not caring about the culture. And it just seemed extremely opportunistic to me and it personally offended me greatly. So I started Rap Coalition in 1992 to pull artists out of bad deals. And you can't be pulling somebody off of a label and be part of the label system. You can't be part of the problem and saying, wow, this problem really sucks, but let me catch a paycheck. Let me be in the middle of it and make money from the people that are opportunistically taking advantage of artists. And that's not to say that everybody in the industry does that, they don't. There are just a few bad actors that have taken advantage of artists unfairly. And I have a problem with that and I've always had a problem with that. So I never wanted to become part of that inner circle because then I wouldn't be objective. I wouldn't be able to step to the people that were taking advantage and say, hey, stop doing that. And I wouldn't necessarily be an advocate for artists if I was sleeping with the enemy, you know? So that's why I never became part of it. I also never understood the business model where money had more value than the art or the art form. So in the equation, there's somebody that makes music and there's somebody that puts up money and takes a risk, right? Well, the person taking the risk is seen as more valuable than the art, than the music itself. And I have a problem with that because a rapper signing to a label is taking just as much risk that these people will know what to do for their career and get them to the next level as the money is taking on the artist and hoping the artist won't self-destruct along the way or will make music that fans will want to hear, right? But for some reason, the money has more value in society so the money gets to set the rules. So when somebody signs an artist, they're signing them for, I don't know, however much money they're gonna advance them and put into the marketing budget, but they're getting their money back first and they're taking it from the artist's small percentage. So an artist might sign to a label and be getting 15 to 18% of the income, but the money that's paying back what's spent, let's just say it's a million dollars so I can make my point, right? Out of their 15% of that income, they're paying back the million dollar budget. It's not coming off the top, which is really technically what it should be. The money should come off the top and then they should split whatever the agreement was and I do believe that you get what you negotiate. So if you negotiate and accept 15 to 18%, that's what you're gonna get. If you negotiate and accept 50%, that's what you're gonna get. But in order to get more, you have to have more going on. You have to have more leverage, right? So that's why I started helping artists put out their music and build a buzz and start making money independently because when you get, when you have money coming in and somebody offers you money, their money doesn't have as much value because you're already making your own. You know, I'm gonna use LaRussell as an example. So let's say LaRussell's making 100,000 a month. If a label comes along, and this is actually a true story, if a label comes along and offers them $250,000 and he can make that in two and a half months but they want him to sign for five years for that advance, he'd be insane to do that deal, you know? So if a label sees what he's doing and they wanna be in business with him, they're gonna have to step up their offer and they're gonna have to come a little more correct. And the great thing about coming more correct is the more money somebody has to put into working with him, the bigger the risk on their part. And if they take enough of a risk, they're not gonna lose. They're gonna make sure that he wins. And that's the value in having a partner that's all in and committed because they're gonna make sure. It's kinda like if I borrowed 20 bucks from you and I didn't pay you back, you'd probably never lend me money again, but it probably wouldn't change your life if you lost 20 bucks. But if you invested $3 million in me and weren't making your money back and I couldn't pay you back, I bet you figure out ways for us to make money so you could get your damn money back. That's the value of leverage. If you're all in, you're gonna figure out a way to make your money back. You're not gonna give up very easily. You're gonna say, okay, that didn't work, let's try this. Okay, that didn't work, let's try this. You're gonna keep plugging away until you get your money back. If you have a little bit of money in and the artist doesn't pop immediately, you might say, pfft, next. So for me, I like the deals that are a little bit bigger and a little bit more highly leveraged because I think they have a better shot of winning. And that's why I always did bigger deals. Yeah, that's funny that you say that. It reminds me of, as controversial as he may be, Grant Cardone, you know who that is? I remember he said when he, the recession happened and he realized that he didn't owe the bank enough. Right, right, right. He said, oh, I only owe them a few million dollars or whatever. Look at Trump. And now they're coming at me trying to hit me but if I owed them a billion dollars, they would be trying to be like, hey. They would be like, hey, we have this opportunity for you. Why don't you come and partner with them, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, that's the exact same concept. It is. It's interesting but it does make all the sense in the world. It makes all the sense of the world. When you look at the artists that I've helped, they've all been in the top five or the top 10 of success and that's why. Because they were always in a position, first of all, where they could do it themselves. We put out music independently so they know how to do it. They don't wait for the label to feed them. They go and feed themselves, right? But they are also so highly leveraged in these deals that the label's like, oh, you're gonna win. Oh, you're going into the top 10 because we're gonna get our money back. And I kind of like that. Yeah. I kind of like that. And then what was the second part of your question? I'm sorry. Well. You asked. It was how do you survive and move being independent so I don't stay outside the industry? I don't know. A little bit of luck. I'm not driven by accolades and I'm not driven by people's opinion or perception of me. I kind of put my blinders on and just work. In fact, I'm more, this is kind of sad to say, but I focus more on my misses and my losses than my wins and my successes. So it's always funny to me when people say to me, oh, you're so successful. Because in my head, I'm thinking of all the things that I tried to do and they didn't win. And I'm thinking, okay, yeah, I did a couple of things that were great, but look at all these things that I tried that didn't come into fruition yet, you know? And I tend to focus more on that. So maybe that's why I don't know that I can answer that. It's interesting because a lot of times people come to people because of, they have a label attached to them, right? On the executive side. If they don't know. Yeah, if they don't know how this works, of course they do. You're next to an artist because you're managing them and all I'm gonna come to you because of that or you're at a label, I'm gonna come to you because of that, but you not doing those things somehow people still find you, which means you definitely have to have good word of mouth. You know what it's kind of like? And this is a really fucked up example, but it's sort of like, if I have a girlfriend who's dating a guy and he's wealthy and he's handsome and he's popular, but he's beating the shit out of her at night when they're alone. I'm not gonna look at that situation and say, gee, I wish he was mine because I don't care that he's handsome and wealthy and popular if that's the price, if getting beaten is the price, right? And I kind of look at major labels that way if an artist has to be broke and not make money and how many people have you seen on social media that have said, yeah, I was signed for three years. I put out five albums and I never made money but show money. Like why would you want to do that if you knew? Well, I know, I know that's the path. I know that's what happens if you go there without leverage. So I never, I never saw that as the win as success. So it's not like I couldn't get into a label. It's that I didn't want to get into a label. I never saw the benefit of that. I wasn't doing it because I wanted a paycheck or I wanted accolades. I was doing it because I wanted the artist to win and that to this day, 31 years later, that's what drives me, I want the artist to win. And I also surround myself with younger people. A lot of people in my generation say, oh, new rap sucks, hip hop is dead, mumble rap, blah, blah, blah, I've never said that. I've been listening to hip hop since 1980 because I'm old, right? I used to ride my dinosaur and listen to hip hop. But I watched it change and grow like every five years or so. So I came up in this knowing that it's ever changing. So I don't look at the 90s and say, oh, that was the golden era. This is when it mattered, everything else sucks. No, I started listening to rap in the 80s. So I listened from 80 to 87 and then the music changed and went from being black nationalism to poppin' bottles. And then it went from poppin' bottles to talking about the internet, talking about perks and whatever. I've seen it change and grow and I know that it's gonna keep changing and growing. Tired of drill rap? It's okay, wait a year, it's just how this is. So I think because I know that and realized it early on, if there was a phase that I didn't like, like I didn't like horror core when that came out in the 90s and the early 90s, I thought that was so stupid but it was gone as quickly as it came. So it's ever evolving and it's ever growing and I love it for what it is and I love it for the fact that there are people making a living doing this. And a lot of the people that are making a living, this is the only way they're gonna make a living, you know? And I love that. And I love that the labels have to listen to young black people, young Latino people and give them a voice and invest in them. I think that's awesome. Like where else does that really happen? Yeah. In most businesses and most economies, as you grow and get older, you become more successful. This is a business where you can be 18 or 21 or 24 and be a multi-fucking millionaire and run an empire. And you get older as you get older. Yes. It's the opposite, right? Cash 22 of it all. Yes. You mentioned the deal earlier that artists make that can be very bad when you go to the major label and the major labels are looked at as the people who are the more valuable or the investor in general. Right. I understand your... Or they were. I understand, yeah, right. I understand your argument. What do you say to the investor though who says, hey, I put my money into this situation. Yes, and I love that. If the money doesn't get made back, the artist can walk away and I just don't get my money. Because it's not like they have to file for Bankruptcy or anything like that. It's true, it's true. The artist does get to walk away, but they've lost time. And in the music industry, like your sweet spot, you've got like 18 to 24. And after that, you're kind of fucked in rap. So if you stay with a label from 18 to 24 and they're not doing the right things and they're not building your career, now all of a sudden you're 27 and they let you go, like your prime years are gone. So yes, they lost money, but it's kind of easy to make money. You can't get time back. And this isn't, I don't mean to sit here and bash on the major labels I actually like the major labels. I think that they have a purpose. And I think that once you have leverage and you're a priority inside of the label, I think they're awesome. I think some of the best people work for major labels. I think somebody like Drake and Rihanna would not be as successful as they are today had they stayed independent. So I don't want to just sit here and bash labels. I'm really bashing the underlying concept and business model of signing 108 people and then two of them become successful. That's what I'm bashing. I'm bashing artists that don't do this on their own and learn how it works and then sign to a label and sit back and say, okay, wake me when I'm famous. That's crazy to me because you're probably gonna have to keep working in order to get to a point where success starts to happen. The label notices and then they get behind you and help you get all the way. That's really more the scenario of success in the music business when you're signed to a label. Do you think a label could be successful without signing as many artists? Not the indie label, but especially on a major label scale. Yes and no. They need pipeline because they're beholden to investors and stockholders. So it's a little bit of a different model. I think this would be a much better world if labels signed less artists and focused on what they had. So I look at the labels like Loud, which was super popular in the 90s, right? And they had some artists that didn't succeed as well, but for the most part, their win ratio was incredible. And they made a lot of money doing what they were doing. The artists made money doing what they were doing. I was talking to Steve Rifkin a couple of weeks ago and he asked me, you know, Wendy, why did you never start a label? And I'm like, because I was never willing to do the one thing that I had to do to be successful, which was own a piece of somebody's publishing. And he said to me, Wendy, I never owned an artist publishing. He's like, we never did that at Loud. And I was like, say word. He's like, yeah, like, why would I do that? That's their art form. So I'm like, wow. So I had this total misconception for the past three decades that in order to be successful as a label, you had to take a piece of ownership in the publishing. But when you look at the dollars and cents, if Steve had signed less successful artists and less artists that couldn't get to the level that they got to, he would have had to have taken a piece of the publishing in order to make money. Make it make sense. Yes, to make it make financial sense. Like all of the investors that come to me and sign artists, they have to own a piece of the publishing in order, like in the very beginning, for them to be able to invest a quarter million dollars into this artist, they have to have some ownership. But as they start to make their money back and once they break even, now they need to renegotiate because they should not be a 50-50 partner once that artist is starting to make great money. They should, it should be more of a sliding scale. Like the artist should now make a bigger part of the profit because the artist is doing more work and the money is less valuable to get them to the next level. So you're a big fan of deals constantly being renegotiated. Oh yeah. Yeah. Now, I get it for as an advocate for the artist, but you see all these conversations. The last one that was super public was to make the stallion one because that's the one I can think of, right? So again, you go back to the logic of, I put money into this person to make money back, right? Now that we have just gotten you popping, now the sudden renegotiation happens. I don't know the ins and outs of that situation, but I'm assuming he probably didn't make his money back yet. I'm thinking maybe, I don't know. I'm guessing. I don't know enough about this to speak on it, but I'm guessing that there's a reason he's bucking. Right, so I'm like, if we just think about a framework, because I think artists and their leverage, I feel like in terms of popularity can happen before the actual money is there, right? So you're like, hey, I'm doing, I'm here now and everything is because of me. It's like, if I haven't made my money back, because popping, you can pop so fast. I'm so relevant so fast. It's like, I will let the money catch up first. So if we think from a technical standpoint. Do you think transparency would help with that? Because we have no transparency. I think if you and I are in business together, right? And we all know what everybody's making and you haven't made your money back, I'm gonna be very cognizant of that and I'm gonna want you to make money. I don't wanna be the only one getting wealthy. And vice versa, if you guys are making all of the money and I'm not, I could see where you might be a little uncomfortable, because it's like, wow, Wendy's our partner, we want her to be able to pay her mortgage and eat, put gas or electric in her car, right? So I think if there's a line of communication and it's a little bit more transparent, and I also think that at the very beginning, if people are more aware of how this works and what it looks like, like when you listen to Megan talk about her side of this, she talks about how she didn't know anything when she signed her contract. Why is that? Why the fuck didn't she know anything? I don't know about you all, but I've been making videos for 30 years about how this shit works. I wrote a book, like it's very hard to feel sorry for somebody in 2023 that doesn't understand how the music industry works, because the information is out there, if I could learn it, anybody could learn it. I'm not smarter than anybody. How did you learn it? Because you're talking about, I'm smarter than everybody, that's how. I came in the game negotiating deals for the cash money and people like that of the world. I didn't come into the industry negotiating deals. I came into the industry pulling people out of bad deals. So I was seeing, okay. How do I come in the game and pull somebody out of the bad deal if I haven't been in the game previously? Right. You know what I mean? Here's what I did. I can't tell you how to do it today. I did it 30 years ago and it was different. So what I did was I aligned myself with really powerful attorneys that were making a lot of money in the music industry. And I appealed to their altruistic side. Most people that are in this, they see like how fucked up it is and they wanna fix it. They want things better, especially for artists, because they're human, artists are people, right? So I would go to attorneys that didn't necessarily care about making money and ask them, hey, could you just look over this contract and see what you think? And they would look it over and be like, okay, this is bad, this is bad, this is horrendous. This needs to come out. And because they had relationships with the heads of the record labels, the major labels, they would call and say, hey, can we renegotiate this? Or, hey, how do you feel about so-and-so? And it's like, oh, they're not really making me any money and I've got these other three artists that I'm focusing on and they're not really our priority. Great, can you release them? Yeah, sure, I don't wanna hold anybody back. So we were able to get releases based on attorneys and their relationships and just doing what was right. And then I never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever did a press conference saying, yeah, we just pulled so-and-so off a death jam because I didn't want to be like, yin, yin, yin, yin, yin, I wanted it to be quiet, I wanted it to be efficient. But I also realized that once somebody got dropped from their label, it was even harder to get another deal. So it's like, okay, great, I got you out of a bad situation with the help of this amazing lawyer, thank you very much, but now what? You know, a lot of the guys that I was helping were going to school to become EMS workers, but they wanted to rap, but they were going and getting job jobs. They were working for FedEx, they were working for UPS. And for me, that was heartbreaking. So I learned very quickly from seeing all these bad deals what a good deal was. And then because I was so outspoken about what I was doing with artists, so many artists were very kind and shared their contracts with the artists that were in great deals. You know, E40 was really supportive in the beginning, too short was supportive in the beginning. So when I was doing Twista's deal, there were guys in their camp that were saying, okay, Wendy, you're about to go do this deal for Twista, here's our deal. You know, we get a million dollars every time we deliver a record. So then I went in saying, huh, okay, I want a million dollars from him every time he delivers a record. And I knew they couldn't say we don't do that because I knew they had two artists signed that they were already doing that with, you know? And then other labels would step in and say, okay, I know you're talking to this other label, we want in. What do we need to do? Oh, well, we're at a million dollar advance. What are you offering? Oh, we'll give you 1.5. Okay, great. You know what? They want half the publishing. If you don't take half the publishing, we'll go with you. And that's how we were able to get better deals because the artist had so much going on in their region already. And then the labels had a feeding frenzy and they were just one upping each other. So we were able to get the better deal out of the label that made the most sense. And by the way, all labels are not equal. If you're an artist that says, I just want to sign to a record label, you're a fucking idiot because they're all different. They're all good at different things. Some are good at social media. Some are good at street promotion. Some are good at radio. Some are great at pop. Some suck at street rap. Some suck at commercial rap. So you've got to go where that team can actually benefit you, where they can add value to what you already do. If you're a street rapper and you go to a label that's all about radio, you're going to be miserable because they're going to try to fit you into their cookie cutter mold and you're not going to fit. And it's just going to be a really bad experience for everybody. So you have to go where it makes logical sense and where the staff can actually work you and help you get ahead. I always say, if you look at the competency of the team, it'll tell you a lot because most people aren't, there are those rare people that are like, hey, I learned all this stuff. This is my bag. But I want to now learn more things. I'm managing this artist. I want to take on new things and really become holistic. There are those rare people, but most people, it's like, if I know the publishing world, I want to figure out how I flip this artist specifically for the publishing world. Exactly. How do I specifically run him through this Chitlin circuit that I know? Whatever I know, I'm just trying to monetize. Right. And I don't have a vision beyond that and I've seen and been in meetings with artists who might be becoming a client or something. You hear the way one is talking and the other one's talking, he's like, oh, she wants to be a superstar. He just wants her to write some songs and keep moving, you know what I mean? Yes. It's something that people really should be cognizant of. They have to, you know, the first thing I ask anybody that I sit down with is what your goal. And it doesn't mean your goal can't change. It just means I'm like GPS. I need to know where you want to be to get you there, to give you directions. If you come and you say, I don't know what I want, how can I get you to the destination? If we're sitting here right now and we decide we want to drive to Chicago, we can get there. But if we're just sitting here saying, I don't know where I want to go, where do you want to go? I don't know. Let's just stop for food along the way. We're never going to get anywhere because we're going to go in circles and bump into each other. It's nothing worse. Yeah, it's not going to work. You need a relationship. I'm like, what are we going to eat tonight? I don't know what you want to eat. I don't know, what do you want to eat? Dear God, yes, exactly. Or in a relationship and your goal is to build the best sneaker collection in the world and your partner's goal is to have a real estate empire. So you're spending money, not to say that you ever would. I'm just making an example. But you're spending money and she's saving money trying to flip. So your goals are complete opposite. You're never going to be happy. You're always going to just be fighting about money because you've got different end games, you know? Yeah, yeah. As you said, you had something specific. I wish I had known that when I first started dating. You know what I mean? Because I used to date people because they were intelligent and I like them, you know? And then I got into relationships with people that had completely different goals than I had. Like my goal was never really to build a family. It just wasn't something that was important to me. Not that I wouldn't have done it, but it wasn't a priority for me. So I remember dating this one guy who's like, I want six kids and I'm like, oh, this is not going to work. Like I could pump out one, maybe two, but six, that is so not me. So you've got to be like-minded and it's the same in the music industry. You've got to have a goal that your team shares and most importantly, most importantly, most importantly, they can get you there. Because if your goal is to become a superstar like Drake or Rihanna, but they don't know how to get you there, how's that going to happen? Because you're signing a contract with them, they're going to be with you for five to seven, possibly 10 years. It's not going to happen by magic. How are you going to get to the level that you're trying to get to if they don't know how to get you there? It's a little scary. I mean, people get lucky, you know. A lot of people get lucky. And they have a manager who grows with them, but most of the time when they get to the top, they have completely different teams around them. And I think that's why the ones that keep the same team are the ones that early on said, this is my goal and sometimes goals change, you know. If your goal is to become like a mid-level artist, but you have a hit record and now you could become the next Taylor Swift, why wouldn't you, you know? So goals can change. I've seen that happen too though, where the manager's like, why wouldn't you? This is it. And the artist is kind of like, nah, I'm cool where I am. Exactly, exactly. That's where communication comes in. Because if you want to manage Taylor Swift and your artist isn't that big, you're always going to be frustrated. You're going to feel cheated. You're going to feel like, man, we're not successful. But you're a multi-millionaire. And if that's how you measure stuff, then you are successful in your own terms, you know? It's all in how you measure it. It's in what's important to you. Yeah. One thing that I found really interesting about your content when I first discovered you was how real you were about the money conversation, right? And I think you were one of the first people I ever heard put like a price on breaking an artist. And it was 250, 200. Can you break down that number? Absolutely. So it's actually, that's what we charge. But it's actually 150,000 in marketing and promotion if you're not hiring us. I noticed early on in my career that so many people would have like 10 grand or 15 grand. And then somebody in the industry would come and help them and say, oh, for five grand a month, I can help you. And the artist would be like on the hamster wheel. And they would spend all their money. And they might grow a little bit or not grow at all. But the person that got paid got paid and then moved on. So there were people that were just in the music industry hitting a lick. And you realize after a while, it's not working. And there comes a point where you have to say which matters more, helping an artist become successful or just making money every month. And if you're somebody that really wants people to be successful, you're going to do the research to find out, OK, why is my business model not working? Like why am I making $5,000 a month from 10 different artists, but none of them are getting to the next level? And I think that when you really look in and you study it, you see that it really takes a lot of money to do this. This is not a free industry. It's not an easy industry and it's not free. And it's one of those industries where you can't be on the outside looking in and figure out how to do it. Like I can't just watch what you're doing and figure it out. I can't watch Beyonce and say, I'm going to do everything she does and I'll be successful because she's already successful. So I saw early on that I didn't want to just make enough money to pay my rent. That would have been lovely, but I wanted the success. I wanted the wins. And I saw what it was taking for the artist to win, the artists who were winning. I saw what it was taking for them to win. And I emulated what they were doing, the artists that were new and getting discovered and blowing up. So I realized how much money it was taking. So rather than trick somebody that doesn't have enough money into hiring me so that I can pay my rent or my mortgage, I was just always up front and said, okay, you don't have enough money to succeed in doing this. So you have a choice. You can either go make more money and then come back and do this or you can find another investor to come in with you so that you have enough money or you can just move forward and spend that and see if I'm wrong. And there's so many people in this industry just spending their wheels and spending money and not getting anywhere that, for me, that's heartbreaking because it makes it look like music isn't successful. It makes it look like music is a huge risk. And while it's risky, I don't want to say that it's not. It's not as risky as it looks when you really know what you're doing. You know, our win rate is insane. So it's not, it's not, I'm not in this to make money. I get paid for what I do and I get paid really well. I don't want you to think I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is I'm not driven by the money. I'm driven by the success. If I can't say this artist makes enough money to live and feed his family, if the investor doesn't make their investment back and some return on their investment, I feel like a failure. I don't care if I can pay my mortgage or my car payment at that point because I'm not successful. If the artist isn't winning and that's why they came to me, then I lost and I don't want to lose. What you're describing is like when NBA players talk about those guys who don't love the game versus especially the people who are like the greats who, hey, I'm winning, I'm making all this money, but I still want to win. I want another championship. I want to go versus the guys who I'm making good money. I'm living life, but I don't really care too much about it. And I'm talking about the guys that are playing well and they come off the court and they go spend three hours in the gym taking shots because they want to be better at what they do. That's really what I'm talking about. The people that want to be the best at what they do and are willing to put in the time and effort. And in this industry, if you study it, you can see what it takes to win. It's not rocket science. Like what we do isn't really that hard. We're not curing cancer. We're not doing brain surgery. It's just we do more of what works and less of what doesn't, right? We market and promote. And when you figure out all the steps that you want to take and then you price them out, there's your budget. You can figure out what this costs. So if you put together a list of everything you want to do that you need to be successful and you add it up and it comes to $150,000 and you've got 10 grand, you've got a problem and you've got a problem I can't solve because you see what it's going to take but you're thinking that somehow you're gonna go into it with less and magically it will work. It's like starting a restaurant and you can afford the building but you can't afford the food or maybe you can afford some of the food. So you have a menu with 30 things on the menu but really you can only make eggs and grilled cheese because you can only afford to buy some of it. You're not gonna be a successful restaurant because people aren't able to eat what they want to eat in your restaurant. You're only serving two things. So it's kind of that philosophy like figure out what it takes to win and then figure out how to get it and then do what's necessary to win. Don't come into this not knowing or understanding how it works and just, oh, I hope I'm successful. I hope this song takes off. I hope I win the lottery. It doesn't work like that. The odds of winning are millions and millions and millions to one but if you learn how it works you can do what you need to do to succeed. Yeah, and I know what we've seen too in the agency side is oddly enough like the ones that wanted bad enough figure out how to get money, right? Like there'll be a lot of them who get turned off by the number and it kind of discourages them but we've seen people come to us and say, I have $2,000. They always think you need at least 100k to do this and they come back like a year later. Yeah, because they figured it out. Yeah, I would take that too and I would pay somebody to do a business plan for me and then I would go out and find investors and I've always got clients and I've always had clients for 31 years now so there are investors out there, artists come to me with their investors, sometimes I have two clients in a year sometimes I have seven. So there are people out there finding investors. It's not impossible. So why not you? Why not you? Yeah, another question I was kind of wondering about too because you mentioned, right, it's 250k to break if you wanna work with us, 150k a market and that means that your fee is 100. It's 100, yes. It's 100k, yes. Absolutely. What does it look like building up to 100k return in the music industry? Like what were kind of the steps or I guess what was the point in your career where you realized like, hey, I could charge this much money for what I'm doing? It's funny, I started out charging 60 grand and I came to that price because I sat down with so many people that said, man, I just lost 60 grand. I need you, you have to show me what to do. So I'm like 60 grand. I could make 60 grand and you wouldn't lose anything. So that's how I started my price and then I started building my reputation and when I had too many clients, I raised it to 80. I stayed at 80 for 14 years or 15 years because I'm not really driven by the money. I'm driven by the success as I mentioned. And then I raised it to 100 just a couple of years ago because I started getting too many clients at 80. So I raised it to 100. And it's funny because when people first come to me, they say, damn, why do you charge so much? Because it feels like a lot of money. And then when they start working with us, they get about maybe five, six months in and they look at me and say, why don't you charge more? And it's funny the difference the time makes. It's like, when I'm working with somebody, I stay with them for as long as it takes. So it could be anywhere from a year and a half to four years. I was in trouble four and a half years. So 100,000 divided by four and a half years, I would have made more money as a Walmart greeter, all kidding aside. But if I have a client that pops off in a year and a half and really is doing all the right stuff and people are gravitating towards their music, then yeah, that's a win for me because I can live on that. And now I have a staff. There's six of us now out here doing this. How long do you wanna do this? 10 more minutes, I'm kidding. In a way, I'm not kidding. I really wanna build an incubator. I've noticed that, and I've noticed this my whole career, that sometimes people with money don't have talent and people with the talent don't have money. And that's always frustrated me. And my clients are all supremely talented. Like I don't take on a client that I don't feel we can win with, right? Cause I want the win. But I turned down a lot of people and I feel badly because it's like I can't win and I know you're gonna go off and you're gonna hire somebody else and somebody else is gonna make money but you're probably not gonna be successful because you don't have what it takes. And it breaks my heart a little bit. Every time I have to tell somebody I'm gonna pass because I feel like maybe I should tell them, hey, you're not gonna make it. But I don't feel like I have the right to do that cause what if three days from now they go and make a hit record and they blow up and they become a superstar? Like who the hell am I to tell somebody that, right? So all I can say is that they're not right for me at this moment, I can't add value. And if I can't add value, I don't wanna be part of the team. So if someone is coming to me and they're depending on me to get them to that next level and I can't do it, I just feel like I shouldn't. But then there's so many people that have 20 grand, 50 grand and they could really win. And I know they could win if they just had the right budget. But for some reason they can't find an investor either they're not good at it or they don't know where to look or they're not willing to do that kind of work because they just wanna make music. I wanna help those guys. So I wanna be able to invest in them, have our company invest in them, help them get to the next level while they're inside of the incubator for two or three years however long it takes, we can share the money based on who's putting up what percentage. And then once they leave, I want them to leave with the ownership of their publishing and their masters. And I'm having difficulty finding an investor to fund this because they want ownership. So if I'm willing to take ownership of 6% or 10% or 20% so that when they leave we still have ownership I can find investors all day. But I can't find the person who thinks like I think and wants to see them leave and go on their way with 100% ownership of their own music and art form. I was gonna ask you why that hasn't happened yet because you've had this idea for a minute. I have. So and then your credibility. 2016 was the first business plan for this and that was a while ago. And I found many investors, it's just they wanted VC firms. They only wanna be in this for five years and you know how long it takes to break an artist. So if my minimum is two to three years I can't cycle through very many people and to cycle them through for the VC to make money they want something, they wanna retain like 6% ownership after the artist leave and I don't want that. How do you make it make sense for, let's say I'm an investor? It makes sense on paper. Right, well, all right, so let's do it right. Without the ownership, go ahead. If I'm an investor, all right, let's just say my initial thing might be, all right, not only if I invest money not being the altruistic side of me. Yeah, forget that, if I'm investing money. If I'm investing money. Surely an investor. Right, the whole thing is to maximize upside. So we finally get something to win. It's hard enough to make something to win and now I'm minimizing and creating a ceiling for the upside, I get on the one thing that I just put all this in to make a win. So what if we choose more artists that would win cause we all kind of know what's gonna win, right? My win ratio is pretty good. So we know what's gonna win. We see the music that fans gravitate towards. We see the work ethic that the artist has. We see the team that they have. We know that if we give them 100K cause they already have 50, we know they're gonna get to the next level. So why don't we work with more of them and less of the ones that don't really have a chance and the investor still makes money because on paper, they can triple their money. They can quadruple their money in the incubator but what's happening is they're looking at the numbers and they're saying, okay, yeah, we can make 500% return but look, we could make 700% return and it's like, well, why isn't 500% enough? Like why does it have to be more? Why isn't, where else are you gonna go and make five times your fucking money in three years? So why does it have to be seven times? You know, why can't we just do what's right, build this company and let them go on and sing our praises and then more next generation artists want to work with us because these artists are out here saying, I made money, I have ownership, I'm loving this incubator that I came from rather than saying, man, I hate my fucking label, I didn't make any money. I hate my fucking label. They took ownership when they didn't have to and by the way, there's a ton of artists out here that would happily give up ownership. They would happily say, Wendy, I'll give you 50% of everything, make me famous. Oh, it's crazy, you know? Before we were in a position where like it made sense to offer us that type of thing. People were like, yo man, can I just, not to have to pay you a fee, can I just offer you ownership? Isn't that crazy? But they don't realize, they don't realize like just one thing is not enough. So now they've given up 50% for one thing and there's seven other things they have to do. So what are you gonna give up to get those other six or seven things? There's not enough percentages of ownership for everybody. What's the difference between an incubator and a label, like your incubator? An incubator teaches artists how to do this, a label does it for you. A label wants to retain their secret sauce and not tell anybody like really who they're hiring or what they're spending or who the priority is. Whereas an incubator is teaching the artist to be self-sufficient. They're teaching them to fish instead of feeding them. And it's not really an incubator, it's really, incubator is just a word I use. It's really an accelerator, right? Because I want artists that are already doing something, like they need to have some skin in the game and they need to have some movement. So it's really an accelerator. But when I say that in our world, people are like, oh, you mean like an incubator? Yes, an incubator. So I call it an incubator, but it's not really. But yes, it's teaching them so that they can go and sign this person and do right by them and then sign that person and do right by them or even bring them into the incubator, if they want to. But I'm trying to build more successful, independent and do-it-yourself artists. That's my goal. I like that. I don't believe you need a major label in this era to be successful. It sounds like what we do on a way more official level, like the, like a true, like you said, accelerator with the traditional tech infrastructure and everything. Yes. That would be amazing. Yes, and we put them out on the road. And we, you know, because remember, I said there's the digital side and then you have to go like kiss babies and shake hands and, you know. You think about like old school artist development too, that aspect of it? Yes. That'd be cool. Yes. If you look at all of the movements in music that have been successful, they've come out of people working together. Atlanta, I'm going to use it as an example because we're sitting here, right? So Gucci Man had a studio back in the day, right? Not far from here, right? And out of that studio came Young Thug, came the Migos, came kind of everybody, right? And that circle of people working together is what incubated the success of Atlanta. Let's look at Memphis. Same thing happened to Memphis. There was a guy that worked for Universal Records and he had access to studio time for free and he let Three Six Mafia come in. He let all of the up and coming artists use Universal Studios for free. After the rock artists and the blues artists were done using it, they would come in and use it in the off hours, but it became a hub. It became like an incubator, if you will. So they all came up together. They all knew each other. They were doing songs together. This guy's producer was producing for that person. That guy's producer was producing for that person. They became like a network, if you will, right? A family almost. And if you look at New York, it was the same bad boy. In LA, it was the same. Like they came out of pods, of people that all kind of worked together. Well, that's kind of what I wanna build. I wanna build a system where everybody comes together and they all share resources and they come up with each other. So as you're beginning to feel success, so is he, so is she. You're all feeding off of each other. You're all helping each other. Hey, I'm going out on tour. You've got a great market. I could really benefit from your market. You could benefit from mine. Let's go on a tour together. Okay, we've known each other for years. Let's go. What I like about your version of it, understanding enough about it just from the tech side where I come and seeing these is it builds leverage over time. Yes. Can't continue to be successful. Where these pods, right? Like another pod, Barry Gordy and all that. Yes, Motown. Yeah, the great pod. Probably the best pod ever. Right. The difference is it's, even though it's these pods are created, these individuals are all still in the business. So they go on and do what they set out to do. And there was a moment in time and then there has to be another pod that gets created. Exactly. Your model is, your thing is the pod. It's regenerating. The pod is regenerating. The pod doesn't go away. The pod stays. Yes. And the staff, the great thing about any of these pods is not only does great talent come out of it, but great team staff, like great management, great engineers, great, you know, I'm drawing a blank, but publicists, like you get it, like promoters. I want the teams to be regenerating at all times. I want people to graduate and go on, both artists and workers. I want everybody to excel and get to the next level. And it works on paper. Like I can make this work on paper. It's just a matter of finding somebody that has the vision to enact it and not say, no, I want to own a record label and I need ownership of everything. Because unless I'm making a hundred million dollars instead of 50 million, it's not worthwhile. Y'all give Wendy the money, man. Give her the money. I love that. I love that, man. You know I'm coming to get you when the money comes, right? I already know what's gonna happen. Please do, please do. You know it's coming. Can we like have done these things in multiple, in our own way, right? Like we were training marketers, music marketers specifically. Because, so you talk about the professionals and I really, even in that process, you realize that yeah, there's these people who have the talent, but they don't have the ability or place to cut their teeth because they can't find artists that are good enough to know if you're doing bad enough, if you only define bad artists or you can't find somebody with a budget. And you think it's you, you're working with a bunch of bad artists, you think, oh, my way doesn't work. No, your way works beautifully, you're just using it on the wrong type of artist. Exactly, it takes an environment for you to even test yourself out in this industry. So much of the talent is spread out. Like I would always say, it's like, okay, especially marketing, right? You can spend a thousand dollar budget, right? And the skill set can take you but so much up to you, right? You're never, once you get there, you're not gonna be able to increase your skills and insight. Not without more money. You spend $10,000 and see what that looks like. Exactly, then 20 and then 50 and then 100. But if you don't have that access or you're not attached to stuff. You hit the ceiling and then the worst part is you don't stay there, you decline. And if you stop, when you start again, it's like starting at zero. It's like starting over. You can't be dormant for three months or six months in this industry. It's like starting back over. You know, it's the consistency that builds success. What do you think about the impact of content? I know the prices have been the prices, right? You talk about the 150K, was it more expensive back then? Or it's always been. It's always been about 150K. Yes. Even adjusted for inflation. Yes, yes, which is weird. So probably it's gotten cheaper because of inflation. So maybe that's where the content kept it at 150K instead of making it cheaper. We spend most money on content. The bulk of that budget is content. Yes, content is king right now. Like it really matters. And I'm even gonna take it a step further and really depress artists. And they hate when I say this, but songs and music videos are content. Like everything today is content. And I realize it's art and I really respect the art. But your art is content. It's content. And it's up to you how good the content is. It is. Yeah, everything is content. Like you don't have to abide by the stigma of how other people do it. Just do yours. Just do you. And put it out and see what's reacting. Like learn how the data and the research work because every platform you have now has data. So you can see, oh, it works better when I put out stuff with a purple background than yellow, okay? Do more of what works and less of what doesn't. It's really that easy. Test your stuff, put it out. If something's not working, stop doing it. Do something else. Like test stuff, do different stuff. Talk about different topics. Talk about different topics in different environments and see what works. If it works better when you're on a playground than when you're sitting in your car, be outside on a playground. Don't be in your car. Do what works. Look at the numbers. Look at the research. Look at what's reacting and do more of that. If you're making songs that are happy and songs that are sad and the happy songs are going further, do more happy songs. If the sad songs are going further, then that's your niche. Do the sad songs. Everybody's different. I can't tell you, oh, everybody makes sad songs because that works. Sad songs work when that's your image and that's what you are bringing to the world. Do what works for you and do more of it and test stuff and look at the research. Look at the data. Figure out who your fans are. Don't just hit everybody. Not everybody is a fan. Find out who your fan base is and target them specifically. And I think that's the hardest part for most artists because they're not savvy about who their fan base is. They don't know. And even if they look at the data, like the fans on SoundCloud might be different than their fans on TikTok. And they don't realize that you can have more than one fan base. It's okay. At some point, you're gonna get big enough where it's all gonna blend together. It's all gonna become the same. I wanna do a quick rundown. Just a little couple of. Ooh, I love rundowns. Of Wendy's post. You know. You have a lot of interesting posts. You know what's funny? I'm telling you to like check the data and I don't on mine. Like I could care less what works, especially on my Instagram. Like I do not give a fuck. I'll see something really cool and I'll post it. Like there's a young kid dancing. That's one of my last posts. I have no idea how many people liked it. I have no idea how many comments are on it. But for me, because I'm not an artist, I'm not trying to drum up business, I don't have to run my social media the way I'm telling you to run yours. But please, go down, go down, yeah. I wanna start with this one. Okay, what you got? You get a post. You shared the post from somewhere to be fair, from Illuminate. Music is an emotional art, knowing what moves drive fans to listen and the causes they care about can help artists form deeper bonds with their fan base. You remember this post? Yes. All right, so then it goes. Top US music listening moves. 64% are happy. This is post COVID, by the way. Post COVID. Yes. This is right after. Yeah, this is context because we were all so fucked up by COVID that when we were coming out of COVID, we wanted happy, happy, happy, give me happy, give me happy. So keep going. All right, 51% of people really like to calm. So that's basically the other part of it, right? Yes, and mental illness is huge right now. Like that as a topic. Like we really care about mental illness. So calm kind of fits that, but keep going. Fun is 49%. Energetic is 49%. Another post COVID. It's 38%. People forget. Yeah, go back to the good times. Yes, yes, and some attachment. Like I told you, driving over here, I was listening to rap from the 90s. And it put me right in the frame of mind that I was in back in the 90s, which for me was fun. It was at the height of my career and I was having a good time and doing deals and life was great. And you know what I mean? Like I was in that inner circle. Now there is no inner circle. It's so fragmented that I can never go back to that. There won't be that, you know? So there's a lot, like the style is important. Yeah, you can use that energy to tap into that old energy, too. Let me get back in my bag. Let me, you know, try to create the scene that was around that time. Exactly, exactly. Plus our happiest memories, you know, like when you had your child or your prom or your wedding, it's like songs anchor, they take you right back to, and it works in the opposite, too. Like a song that you heard, I smashed my BMW to throw some Ds on it. So every time I hear that song, I remember what it felt like for the airbag to explode in my face, right? Music anchors to good and bad moments. When I hear this song, I go, huh. Every time I hear Wacka Flocka, Wacka Flocka hard in the paint, I think about falling through the floor every single time. I'm sorry to hear that, yeah. I mean, yeah, more house party, interesting time. I've heard the story. I don't know, I didn't see the video. I was there, it was up, but yeah, nah, yeah, that was, I was up in there. It was a long, interesting night. Great story though, you know, college, you know. You told me the day I met you. That was a great story. Yeah, I'm not going to detail here. I have forgotten about that. I love that you mentioned it though, because I've forgotten about that, you sure did. Focused is 30%, that's interesting. Low-fi hip hop, focused. So you play music when you study, which remember the fans are 13 to 26. So from 13 to 22, most people are in school, right? College, high school, middle school. What do you do when you study? You play music that's calming and serene helps you to focus low-fi hip hop, or instrumentals, or whatever. Just feel like gashes you up. And I think that's just interesting because you wouldn't have expected that to be high. Or people don't even think about that as a category, one. And for that to be as high as it is, because it's over content, which is interesting. I would like to know what that is. And then sad being 23%. Which is funny, we have so much emo rap. Exactly. Oh my God, yes. There's so much being pushed out there. You would think it's so much bigger than it is. Right. And I wonder how that dissidents can happen where people are thinking, this is the thing, let's create more in that. And you even see more artists. Cause I talk about people who be a part of social causes and don't really care. I see a lot of artists doing sad rap because they feel like it's working. Exactly. More than, and even when they'll tell you, I really care about this thing. I want to touch people's heart, but really they saw how somebody like ex or a juice world connected with people. Yes, because they were sad. Right, because they were fucked up. Exactly. So maybe if they knew, hey, this wasn't as big as you think it is. Because the reality is artists are not checking the stats to see what's working and what's not. They're just making music cause they feel like it's them, but it's what they're surrounded by. That's your bubble. It's your bubble. And if everybody in your bubble is eating Percocets and they're sad and down, you think the world is sad and down. Well, now you know artists. If you really want to get the bag and you're just choosing what you create, just for the bag, sad is not the way to go. Sad is not it. Happy, most people want to be happy. And that's also going to probably extend beyond the bubbles which is probably why the number is so big. Okay, now let's look at these other topics on here. I would like to know your, let me see, it says causes that fans care about. Hip hop fans care most about. Number one, mental health. Mental health. Number two, racial justice. Number three, homelessness and poverty. Yes. Okay. Yes. Interesting. Rock and country. And that's mostly Gen X. That's this generation, right? Generation X, okay. It's mostly Gen X. Rock and country fans both care most about one, mental health, two, animal welfare. Right? You know I'm not a rock and country fan. I just never would have imagined that to be on this list. And number three, homelessness and poverty. All right. Well, you would expect it to be on the list. Think of all the memes you've seen talking about if white folks see a black man get beat by a cop, they don't really react. But if they see a dog getting beaten, like the world ends. Think about those memes. I'm aware. Yeah. That's that. But man. Seeing a number from a different. Yeah, in relation to the music and the fan. And this is Luminates end of the year study. So this is from January of 2023, which means the research was done September to December-ish, like in the fourth quarter. So it's not that long ago. This is interesting. Okay, and then Latin fans care most about number one, mental health. So that's the thing across the board, which I look, man. I'm, I'm a little skeptic because I'm like such a marketer. I'm like, man, y'all have been marketing mental health to people. I feel like a little bit is being exploited at the, well that's a whole nother. I'm right with you. You know what I mean? I'm right with you. Number two, homelessness and poverty. And then number three, which is also a surprising one, climate change. That surprises me too. And here's what's especially interesting about this. Is Latin music and country music are the fastest growing music right now. These are Latin. Latin and country are the two fastest growing and then world comes in third. World by K-pop, the Afro-pop. The amount of success that that music is getting streamed. Worldwide. The amount of money, I don't know if this is worldwide. It's illuminate. It might not be. Okay, but stream specifically though. Yes, it might be just in the US. But Latin and country are growing the most of all the genres. Got it. It doesn't mean they're the biggest. It means that they're growing fastest right now. And just to add this clarity because someone asked you to elaborate, I'll just read what you said. Because someone asked, what do the percentages represent? You said, knowing what moods drive fans to listen. So 64% of the fans listen to music when they are happy. 23% of the fans listen to music when they are sad. And seek out that mood. Right, and seek out that mood. You said, you're one of those people. Yeah, I am. But you're seeking it out to be cheered up. So you're listening to it when you're sad too, but you're listening to it. To feel better. Well, that's not true. Sometimes I listen to sad music when I'm sad because I wanna cry and get it out of my system. Okay, explain that to me, yeah. And that might be a female thing. I never get that. Yeah, that might be a female thing. There's a lot of, no, that's a lot of guys who do the same thing. I'm not somebody who's comfortable crying. Like I was raised that, you know, don't cry or I'll give you something to cry about. So we were taught not to have emotion as kids. So sometimes when I'm sad, in order to get it out of my system, I'll listen to, like if somebody breaks up with me, I'll listen to love songs where, you know, she was done wrong and life sucks and oh my God. And I'll be like, oh, that's so sad. Like a sad movie, right? Like, oh, that's so sad. And then I'll feel better. Like after I get it out of my system, that it's like, oh, I feel much better. Okay, let me go walk my dog. Let me go, you know, do whatever in life. And you do the same thing. Yeah, bro, what? That's something, you don't do it? No. That's crazy, bro. You ain't never just wanted to sit in your emotions with the music man? No, and I get in fights with it. Well, you're, you might be very in touch. You may not have grown up the way that I grew up. You know, where you're in touch with your emotions where when I was growing up, like, I can't cry in public. I get embarrassed as fuck. If I'm in the movie theater and I start crying, I like hide my face, like it's terrible. It's terrible to cry in public. My logic is like, if I feel this way and I don't want to feel this way, I don't want to consume something that's going to make me feel more like that. So you listen to the opposite. And also in fairness, like, I'm a really happy person. I think you've probably noticed. So you know how like the algorithm in social media gives us more of what we already believe? So I see happy stuff all day. Like some of my friends will be like, man, did you see the news? Like this person died and this disease and that. And I'm like, I don't see any of that because it's not what I consume. So I have to actually seek it out. Like if I'm looking for something negative, I have to go find it. It's not going to be fed to me. Yeah. So maybe you're more balanced because maybe you are seeing good and bad in your algorithm. Maybe it's getting fed to you. Pretty balanced. I guess I also have been like, like I'm one of also one of those people where I won't watch like really demented movies and things like that. But I feel like if you people who do that, oh, they're like escaping into that to imagine stuff. But for me, I'm like, it's really already crazy enough up in here anyway. So I'm trying to minimize that. For real, because then I've consumed that stuff and like, cause my imagination is like crazy. Right. Cause you're creative. So I'm like, how the shit blend around me. Right. Cause. Cause you're already out. You're already out there. Yeah, cause it like. I get it. I get it. I get it. I was watching a series on Netflix or whatever. And it's called Gangs of London. And it's just gratuitous violence, right? And I was watching it and one of my friends said to me, oh my God, this is so violent. I'm like, it is. I hadn't really noticed it cause I'm so desensitized to it. To me, it was just like, I was laughing at it. It was like, man, nobody's going to hang somebody up a building like that. But that's funny. Oh, looky, you let him on fire and he burned down the rope and they fell 50 stories. Oh, that sucks. My reaction to it is different than most people where they're like a gas like, oh my God. It's like I can separate. So maybe, maybe that's you. Like you don't need to watch that stuff because in your head, it's already there. Not violence, but like you said, like it's like quirky stuff, right? Maybe. Quirky might work. Yeah. Maybe you're so creative that it's already there. So you don't have to watch it. And even if you watched it, it might not be as good as what's already in your head. I don't know. I don't know about the love. I'm freestyling. I like to watch it. But yeah, I think. It definitely is some of the idea of I don't need new material because my mind will take it so far and do weird things with it already. And it's like, I try to, and that's kind of a thing in my family, my dad's like a hyper creative dude. Okay. So you come by it honest. It's your DNA. And if you look around him, he's a whole another story of mine. That's funny. But he's a hyper creative dude. So did you notice, not trying to change the subject, but did you notice in what you were just reading that it's not about genre? It's about, even though you were talking about the different genres, it's almost like playlist, like happy, sad, energetic focus. There is no more genre. You know, a happy playlist might have a happy rock song and EDM song and a rap song all in a row. And that's normal today. I think that's. It's genre bending. I think it's always kind of been that way. And now we're just seeing it? Yes. Exactly. I love that. Because. I love that. The way we did things before, the idea of genres was just a way to organize things. Well, it came from radio, didn't it? Exactly. Like it was just radio formats. You listen to rock or you listen to country or you listen to EDM or dance or whatever. Because you wanna play things that you are more likely to like. We wanna keep you there to sell ads. And keep you there. Right. Exactly. We're always, as humans, gonna look to judge stuff. Right. But then when you create your personal CDs, right? When people do slow jam CDs, right? They're pulling a specific mood. Or when we're at events, right? If we're at a cookout, we're playing a certain mood. We're at a club, we're playing a certain mood. That's always been that way. But I think now, because of the lack of physical, right? You have the ability to do that without the opportunity cost of having to buy another CD or buying another record. So it just makes it easier for us to do what we wanted to do in the first place, you know? But I don't think you can get away from ever like calling it a genre name, at least from a formal business standpoint. I feel like there's a place for it. Yeah, the labels are fighting it. Yeah. Because they like the boxes. Yeah, I mean, I think I'm a person who, as much as I don't like boxes, no labels, right? But I also understand them as a tool. So my thing is your use labels as a tool, but don't allow them to define you personally, right? Right. And I think that's the balance, because the tool is, all right, if I don't have forever to talk to you and you're like trying to figure out what I do, I'm a music marketer, right? Right. And I might tell somebody else, you know, something completely different, but it's something that fits what I need them to know about me at the time, right? So that's just communication of it. But then me, I always think of myself as more than that. And I think that's what I have to get used to, right? It's like, all right, over here, there's a function of why I'm doing this, but on the other end, all right, I still know I might want to create way more different music. Exactly. And there's a different way to go about it, but I don't want to get too deep in that and how I think about it. I want to ask you one more thing to get your opinion on, because I know you have strong thoughts on this. You know that Universal Music sued over its Spotify, no, they wrote it wrong. All right, Universal Music was sued over its Spotify equity ownership in the class action lawsuit by Blacksheet, right? One, speak a little on Blacksheet before you talk about your opinion, because a lot of people don't know a Blacksheet. I'm not even super adept at Blacksheet. I know what I've been writing. They were signed to Mercury Records in the 90s. They're like a mid-level rap group. They were successful. They had a couple of hit records. They, their trajectory, I mean, they're still popular. I don't want to imply that nobody's listening to them, but they were, the height of their career was probably like a five to seven year span, because that's kind of what you get as a rapper, right? So what they found was that their deal, they didn't think was very fair, and it probably was not at that point in time, just because of the time that they came up. And Universal invested into Spotify and then sold their shares, and they want to understand why they didn't get a share of the return on investment, since it was their money, not just their money, but a lot of artist's money that made the investment. That was their feeling. Like, well, where's our share of that? You get a share of everything we do, whereas our share of what you did. It's still in the court system, I'm still watching it. I think it's really interesting what they're doing. A lot of artists jumped on that with them, which I love, it became a class action suit, and I'm anxious to see what comes from that. I can't really speak on it one way or another, because I don't know the financials of the investment that went into it. I don't know where that money came from. Do you think a big artist would ever support that? I hope that they would, yeah. I hope that Taylor Swift, or Drake, or Rihanna joined it. I don't know if they have or not, but I could see where somebody with a bigger share of the pie would have way more weight in the decision than smaller artists that have less weight, right? I would think. Logically, that makes sense. I don't know, I'm freestyling again. Chacor, you have any questions for Wendy before we hop on out of here? I'm at a chance of everything for me. Thank you, Wendy. Thank you for having me. I really love that you're doing this. You're helping so many people by doing this. I just, I love you guys. I appreciate that. Thank you, I appreciate it. I definitely love you, too. One of my favorite people in the industry. Same here. I really love you. One of the gliding lights. When things get dark, all right, Wendy, come over there. Come on. Things look good. I remember when you were teetering and you weren't sure that you were still gonna do this. I'm like, dude, you got to. You've got the fan base, you got to keep going. I don't know, y'all don't know, man. I was on the go, go, go fan base. I was doing other things, man. I could have just been a fan. I wanted to hop back into the matrix. I know you did. You know what I mean? But you always can't, you always can't. I just want to be a fan and not know all the behind the scenes. Yeah, sometimes it's ugly. I know, I know. It's hard. But we here. Lesson, don't meet your heroes. It can be really depressing. All right, now I believe it. That's literally my one goal, like don't meet any of them. He says that constantly. All the time. I do not want to. Don't do it. Don't do it. Cause you just don't know. It could really be a douchebag. You just, you never know. You just never know. They're people and people are people are people. You know? Yeah, yeah. Don't blame the entities. Don't blame the titles. Don't blame the economics system. People suck. That's what it is. Shoot. But we are out of here. Thank you so much for having me. Yes, thank you. I love doing this. Yet another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast. I'm Brandon Mancheon. And I'm Colby. And we out. Peace.